Integrating Formal and Informal Social Care: Social Action Approach

Abstract

Although not a new concept, in recent years at a time of economic recession and cuts in state welfare services, informal social care has become an important feature of social policy. However, social groupwork practice has continued to focus on working with artificial groups with individualistic therapeutic intentions. Based on experience of working with peer groups of young people, the author advocates a 'social action' model of groupwork which is concerned with mutual aid, but not as an alternative or second best to state provision, nor in conventional terms as means for treating, controlling or providing for people defined as deviant or dependent. Such an approach requires a shift in the paradigm of practice from being 'essentially personalistic' to giving 'primary attention to the way in which public issues penetrate private troubles'. The author argues that the 'social action' approach can be extended to work with other client groups and in a range of social work settings.